


Please Stay

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Mirakuru, Multi, Revenge, Sexual Content, Spoilers to 2.12, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shado comes back to Slade. But she isn’t the same.</p><p>Mentions of past Oliver/Shado and Oliver/Shado/Slade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please Stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashcat/gifts).



A year after Shado dies, Slade starts to see her.

She comes, at first, at night.

She is next to him in bed suddenly, and he is startled, moves back. She places her finger over his lips and smiles, silently tells him not to worry. 

She kisses him then, her lips cool, wet. She moves her hands across the nakedness of his body, and it sends a chill down his spine, but she is here and he is grateful and he can’t be bothered to ask the questions he should ask.

They make love then, her legs astride his body, and it’s not the panting, sweaty thing he remembers. Shado’s heartbeat is steady, slow, like the waves of the ocean. When they are done, Slade leans his head against her breasts and listens to the sound.

Shado stays with him after that. At first, only at night, only in bed, only when he is alone.

Eventually, she is with him at all times of day, popping in whenever she has something to say. She appears in his meeting with others, in his battles as well, and she never does anything, never speaks to anyone but Slade. They cannot see her, and he, to keep up appearances, only answers her questions with slight nods or shakes of the head.

He is not sure if he is being haunted. He hopes that he is; he hopes that it is really her. But he can’t discount the possibility that she is the product of his poisoned mind.

He doesn’t try too hard to figure out the answer. She’s with him again, and that, he thinks, is what matters.

\--

Shado is a connoisseur of violence, he discovers. She has a taste for it: the grace of it, the coldness mixed with heat, as his blade strikes flesh again and again and again.

He kills for information, for advantage, for power and resources. When he is displeased, he kills for punishment. 

He didn’t used to be like this; he used to accept violence as a part of life, and one that he was good at. And while he didn’t mind doling out a nice kick to the ribs, he never killed without reason, and he certainly never enjoyed it, not like this, like peace is a toxin he has to expunge from his body, like it’s a joy to bathe in other men’s blood. He doesn’t care if it was Mirakuru or grief that changed him, but it’s obvious something has. Now, when he pushes through the weakness of the human body, when flesh yields easy and wet to his sword or to his hand, he savors it, lets the sensation, the rush, wash over him like sunlight, like soft rain. 

Shado laughs, low and hearty, at each of his kills, as if he’s shown her something delightful.

Sometimes, she whispers in his ear that one body isn’t enough, that a pile would be a stronger message. He always obeys her.

He would still do anything she asked.

When he goes homes after a kill, as soon as they are alone, she pushes him against the wall, presses her body against his. Her tongue pushes into his mouth and her hands make her intentions even clearer.

Nothing makes her want Slade like death. 

It’s mutual. They are a perfect match, much more so than in life.

\--

At first, he tries to keep it from her. He’s not sure how she will react to his plan to take revenge on Oliver.

She’s smart, though. It doesn’t take her long to figure out that he’s stockpiling resources in Starling City. 

So he tells her his plan. He tells her that Oliver’s demise will be slow and excruciating. Oliver wants to save the city; instead, he’ll watch the city fall. Oliver wants to protect his friends; instead, he’ll be completely alone (like Slade was, before Shado came back to him). The whole time, Slade will be monitoring him and his loved ones closely.

He explains all of it, and waits for her to object.

Instead, she smiles. She thinks the plan is perfect.

“Do you remember when we used to torment him together?” she says with a smile, her legs wrapped around him. 

“That was … very different,” Slade says, running his hand up Shado’s waist.

She laughs. “Not so different. Us. Working together. Taking him apart, piece by piece.”

Slade remembers. It was the three of them for a while. They would tie Oliver up, do anything they wanted to Oliver’s body, and Oliver would beg for more. Kinky fucker, that kid. There was a time when the thought would have filled Slade with desire.

Then Slade had been stupid enough to ask Shado to choose. She was angry at him for asking, but he couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted Shado for himself.

Maybe it was out of spite that she chose Oliver. 

Probably it was because she loved Oliver more.

“Are you sure you want to destroy Oliver?” he asks her as her cold fingers run across his jaw. “He used to be your favorite.”

“I was wrong,” she says, and kisses his forehead. “Forgive me.”

“Of course.”

“This won’t be like last time,” she promises with an eager grin, hungry for blood. “This time, we’ll torment him, push at all his soft little weak spots, and then the two of us will walk away together. We’ll leave behind a trail of blood that ends with Oliver dead, and we’ll throw him away like garbage.”

“Like he did for us.”

She smiles, then starts to nibble at his lower lip. “Exactly.”

\--

Sending Mirakuru-powered soldiers to tear up the city is easy enough. Oliver manages to score a few setbacks against him, but Slade, being in the shadows, has the advantage.

Isolating Oliver is only slightly more challenging. Oliver himself turns away from his own mother. After Slade makes it look like Roy is killing people, Oliver locks him up; Slade calls Thea and tells her where to find Roy, who promptly tells her who Oliver really is, and soon neither of them are speaking to him.

Diggle and Felicity are a challenge. But he comes up with a way to make it seem that Diggle has betrayed him for a chance at the organization that killed his brother, and Oliver pushes him away. Felicity, enraged at Oliver for refusing to listen to Diggle’s side of the story, leaves also.

Of course Oliver figures it out in a few days. But, just as Slade expected, the kid is too proud and too ashamed to ask them back.

Isolation, then failure. That’s the plan.

Everyone criminal in the city imagines that the Hood has no weak points. This is laughable, of course, since Slade sees how easy it is to make Oliver fall apart.

This is how Slade does it: every night, Oliver hears about a major problem from the police scanners. Every night, Oliver tries, pathetically, to save the day.

Every night, Oliver fails. Slade makes it impossible for Oliver to save everyone. 

Sure, a few times, Oliver manages to surprise him, manages to figure out some ridiculous way to get everyone there out alive. But most nights, Oliver fails this city.

It takes only ten days of this for Oliver to crawl back to Verdant’s basement and wreck almost everything there in an enormous fit, then fall to the floor, weeping himself to sleep.

Slade watches this on camera and sees that he is very close to success.

“I know what you are thinking,” Shado says, appearing suddenly. “Don’t.”

“What?” he asks, all innocence (he doesn’t blame her for narrowing her eyes at him; he doesn’t wear innocence well).

“Don’t show him mercy,” she says, and it’s clear that she won’t brook defiance. “We did that on the island and look where that got us.”

\--

Slade sleeps late the next morning.

He never sleeps late.

He goes to check his surveillance but finds that there isn’t any.

None of his cameras on Oliver’s club or home are working. 

He’s not at any of his safehouses, lookout spots, information sources, or anywhere else. He’s not at any of the places Oliver Queen might show himself either – not at the office, not at that diner, not anywhere. And facial recognition software can’t pick him up anywhere in the city, even though Slade has access to security cameras all over. 

There’s only one reason that Oliver would be completely off the grid all of a sudden.

Oliver knows he’s being watched.

Slade, somehow, must have been sloppy.

Slade searches for him all day and all night, until at 6 in the morning, Shado appears.

She is displeased. “You need to send him a message. So he knows that if he doesn’t show himself, there will be consequences.”

He decides to blow up Verdant. Granted, it’s early in the morning, and the building will be empty – it’s a little casualty-free for Slade’s tastes – but some things can’t wait.

He starts by setting up the accelerant.

He is just about to get out the C4 when he feels a sharpness, a jolt of something.

Enraged, he sees that he has been shot with an arrow tipped with a needle that has pushed some chemical into his system. It’s the same kind Oliver has been using against the Mirakuru soldiers, but triple the dose. 

As he loses consciousness, he sees Shado. She is laughing at him; her face looks cruel, and he doesn’t know why.

\--

Slade wakes as Oliver throws a bucket of water in his face.

He’s chained to concrete pillar with more than a dozen layers of heavy duty chain.

Slade smiles.

Oliver walks up to him but stops a foot away. “We need to talk,” Oliver says, casual, amused, though Slade can hear the fear in his voice.

“This is going to end badly for you, kid,” Slade says, softly, mocking.

Oliver’s jaw tightens. “I knew it was someone. Doing… all of it. Someone after me. I never would have expected it to be you.”

“Because you thought you killed me. You can’t.”

“We’ll see,” Oliver says, and Slade sees through his bluff in a heartbeat.

“You might have been able to when I was unconscious, but you didn’t. You’re too soft.”

“You’ve been tailing me for months. You’ve seen what I can do.”

Slade chuckles. “I’ve seen a pathetic child fail to stop me from building my army again and again. I’ve seen a lonely little boy crying on the floor because his friends don’t like him anymore.”

Oliver grimaces, then tilts his head. “How sweet. You’ve been checking up on me.” 

Slade narrows his eyes. “Shado died because of you.”

Oliver swallows. “I didn’t choose her. I--”

“I know. But you were weak. That’s why she died.” 

“That’s not fair,” Oliver says, shaking his head, and Slade can see him wince at the irrelevance of his own words.

“We took you in. Kept you from starving or dying bloody. And you killed her and shot me through the eye. That’s fair?” Slade is breathing hard.

Oliver’s face pinches up, and he turns away quickly.

This is too much. Oliver has the _nerve_ , the audacity, to turn away from him?

Slade feels the anger push through his blood, a rush of flame and steel, and he pulls at the chains, angles his body down for leverage, and breaks free.

Oliver starts running as soon as he hears the first chain strain, but Slade is still too fast for him, too strong for him. Oliver turns and draws his bow, but Slade has him on the ground before he can release, and the arrow flies into the ceiling.

He straddles Oliver, holding his wrists to the ground, hard, feels the rush of satisfaction when he hears something in Oliver’s hand crack, when he sees barely concealed pain wash across Oliver’s face.

“Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?” Slade growls at him. Slade isn’t sure if it’s mockery or if he’s just honestly pissed that the kid’s learned nothing, that he’s still soft and stupif.

But then he sees Oliver look away. Hiding something.

Oliver has the gall to hide something from him again.

He places his hand on Oliver’s neck. It takes all of his self-control not to squeeze and be done with it.

“Tell me why you didn’t kill me,” Slade repeats, pressing down on his throat, “Or your family pays for your sins.”

He can see Oliver’s eyes water, and he’s not sure if it’s the lack of air. But Oliver answers him.

“Shado told me not to.”

Slade keeps his hand on Oliver’s neck. “What?”

He can see that Oliver is afraid to speak. But he does: “I dreamt of her, Slade. The night I realized it was you behind everything that’s happened.”

Shado has been coming to Oliver too? 

“She told you not to kill me?” Slade demands.

Oliver pauses. “She told me I have to save you.”

Slade looks at him, bewildered. 

“I know it’s just a dream,” Oliver says, quickly, as if he were afraid that Slade would think he’s crazy (as if that would matter now). “But it… it felt like her. Slade, it felt like her.” Oliver looks up at him, waiting, hoping for something. Hoping, it seems, for Slade to tell him that it wasn’t a delusion.

Slade releases his neck and turns away, facing the wall. 

He feels like he’s going to throw up.

Oliver sits up and tries to come closer, but Slade barks, “Stop!” and he does.

Oliver starts to talk. “Shado wouldn’t want--”

“I will break you in half if you finish that sentence, kid,” Slade spits, and even Oliver isn’t stupid enough to keep talking.

Slade tries to calm down, tries to stop the surge of violence threatening to make him rip Oliver’s heart out. He is breathing hard, shutting his eyes, trying to bring back Shado, begging her silently to appear to him again.

 _Of course,_ Slade thinks. _Of course it was never the real her._ Even in death, even as a vengeful ghost, she could never be so twisted, so dark. She could never be so monstrous unless she was birthed from his poisoned mind.

_Of course it’s Oliver who gets the real Shado. Again, even in death._

He knows, in some corner of his consciousness, that Oliver’s dream was just a dream. But the injustice of it, of her choosing Oliver _again_ , even after what he did to her, makes his stomach churn. His muscles feel tense, pained, everywhere in his body, and he is shaking. 

It’s obvious now. Shado would hate what Slade has become. Shado would be disgusted.

Shado would put an arrow through him and make it stick.

Shado would choose Oliver again and again and again.

He keeps shaking, and he’s making sounds that he barely recognizes as sobs. He is on his hands and knees now, helpless against the absence of her ghost.

He feels Oliver come closer, place the hand that Slade didn’t break on his shoulder. Oliver glides his hand softly down Slade’s back, in some poor imitation of comfort, and Slade thinks that Oliver must have drugged him, because he doesn’t have the strength to push the traitor away.


End file.
